What defines a toxic culture, and how to avoid it

Your workplace culture can either work for you or against you. A toxic culture, characterized by negativity, dysfunction, conflict, and a lack of trust, works against your business and everyone involved with it. Toxic cultures get in the way of employees and teams fulfilling even the most basic daily tasks, and if left unchecked, can affect bottom-line outcomes for your whole business.

These cultures often form when there is little to no deliberate effort to maintain a positive working culture within a company and when culture isn’t treated with the degree of importance it requires.
A toxic culture can be characterized by one or more of the following characteristics:

– Poor communication
Transparency is minimal, conflicts are frequent, and trust between employees and their leadership is low.
Collaboration and teamwork feel more like a chore than an opportunity.
Employees feel ignored, disregarded, or worse

– Inactive leadership
Leaders and managers have no responsibility, incentive, or requirement to actively manage the culture within their teams
Leaders are closed off from employee feedback
They don’t make time to support, guide, or mentor their employees, leaving people to struggle without direction or intervention
Longstanding communication issues and trust issues persist
Employees feel undervalued and uncared for both as professionals and as people

– Negative attitudes and unethical behavior
People have a generally negative, competitive attitude towards one another
Overall morale is low, and personality conflicts are frequent
Some people may gossip and factionalize amongst each other, creating unintended silos that make collaboration nearly impossible

– Lack of work-life balance
Employees grapple with unrealistic expectations that eat into their work-life balance, such as responding to emails or calls after hours or regularly working overtime without fair compensation
Employees are expected to prioritize work over their personal lives, even in emergency situations
People feel overwhelmed with stress and burnt out, leading to overall lower engagement and performance.
A toxic culture can be incredibly disruptive and destructive to a company’s overall chances for success. Luckily, there are plenty of action steps that leaders can take to make sure that such a culture doesn’t take shape in their own workplace. Qualtrics provides some useful ideas for inspiration:

– Reinforce your company’s values: Communicate your values clearly, and like we discussed in last month’s Wisdom on Wednesday entry, make sure that your leaders are reinforcing them on a daily basis. Core values mean nothing if they are just words on paper – they mean everything when they are accounted for in every decision and interaction.

– Lead by example: As a leader, you have an immense degree of influence on the people who work with and around you. People tend to mimic the behavior of the people who lead them. With that in mind, make yourself a role model for your team. Don’t take the bait! Avoid feeding into any toxic elements of the culture and play an active role in intervening when they happen. Make sure that your people see you treating everyone with equity and respect.

– Be receptive and responsive to feedback: Give your employees the opportunity to share feedback about your leadership and their working environment on a regular basis. By actively listening to your people, you can effectively identify and respond to the troubles they are facing and make a positive, tangible difference for them. Ensure that employees don’t feel discouraged from sharing their authentic thoughts and opinions, even if they go against the grain. When they do share their feedback, create an action plan to address it and hold yourself accountable to it!

– Treat your employees with dignity: Your employees are more than their role. Actively and routinely take time to understand who your people are, what motivates them, and how they prefer to communicate. By making time to learn about your employees, you can better understand what they need from you and their environment to do their best work.

A toxic workplace culture can be incredibly damaging, not only to employees but to the overall success of a business. It can lead to breakdowns of communication, disengagement, and a lack of trust, all of which make it difficult to reach goals and achieve success. However, the good news is that leaders have the power to change this.

By actively reinforcing company values, leading by example, being open to feedback, and treating employees with dignity, leaders can shift the culture toward one that is positive, collaborative, and productive. With the right approach, it’s possible to prevent a toxic culture from taking root and instead create an environment where everyone can thrive.